The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has adviced President Bola Tinubu not to wave the planned nationwide protest scheduled to commence on August 1st aside, but address the grievances of the masses through leaders of the planned protest.
President of the NLC, Comrade Joe Ajaero in a statement issued on Monday in Abuja, told President Tinubu that Nigerians were very angry with him, even as he added that the sufferings in the country was worsening by the day as eating from the dustbin has become a luxury in the country.
He said: “As the date for the widely reported national protest looms, the Nigeria Labour Congress urges President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to invite the leadership of the protest movement for discussions on their grievances.
“The truth is that millions of Nigerians are angry about the state of the national economy. A situation where most Nigerian families are forced to eat one miserable meal a day and eating from the dustbin is now seen as luxury beckons for serious intervention by government.
“Corroborating a recent country living standards index assessment by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) which established that about 133 million Nigerians live below extreme poverty lines, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) posits that in the first three quarters of 2024, about 32 million Nigerians have been exposed to acute hunger.
“When this statistics is added to the millions that are being recruited into the armies of the unemployed and under-employed Nigerians, one can easily situate the hardship, pain, frustrations and despair that many Nigerians are going through right now.”
Ajaero further advised the government to listen to the cry of the people rather than deploy dictatorial tendencies to prevent Nigerians from expressing their fundamental rights of expression..
“The truth is that Nigerians have been hard pushed and super pressed right against the walls of deep deprivation and acute want.
“It is, therefore, condescending and dismissive to describe the daily brutish ordeal that Nigerians are going through as a sponsored political dissent.
